The study of the museum visitor has undergone radical transformation. Each author here has asked unfamiliar questions and responded with fresh answers. Some of these questions involve the visitor's identity, what she brings to her museum experience. Can we gain entry into this experience? Does more technology really increase access to the objects themselves? Others probe the very nature of museum going and exhibition making, demanding that we reexamine the traditional exhibition to reposition the visitor and her meaning-making at the centre. The volume provokes imaginative research and encourages new conclusions.
Elise is scared of everything - spiders, people, even trees. So she never goes out, night or day. One day a strange thing flies in through the window and lands at her feel. And then there comes a knock at her door. Elise has a visitor.
Drawing upon a career in studying museum visitors, renowned researcher John Falk attempts to create a predictive model of visitor experience, one that can help museum professionals better meet those visitors’ needs.
What does the transformation to a visitor-centered approach do for a museum? How are museums made relevant to a broad range of visitors of varying ages, identities, and social classes? Does appealing to a larger audience force museums to "dumb down" their work? What internal changes are required? Based on a multi-year Kress Foundation-sponsored study of 20 innovative American and European collections-based museums recognized by their peers to be visitor-centered, Peter Samis and Mimi Michaelson answer these key questions for the field. The book describes key institutions that have opened the doors to a wider range of visitors; addresses the internal struggles to reorganize and democratize these institutions; uses case studies, interviews of key personnel, Key Takeaways, and additional resources to help museum professionals implement a visitor-centered approach in collections-based institutions
From the author of The Whispers comes a heartrending tale of friendship, hard-won truths, and the healing power of forgiveness. A lonely twelve-year-old boy spends his days “stuck” at the deserted Hollow Pines Plantation in Georgetown, South Carolina with no recollection of his name, how long he’s been there, and no idea how to leave. Things never change much for the lost souls at Hollow Pines and time is strange when you’re dead. But when visitors from the living world arrive for the first time in a long while, the boy feels a spark of hope. These visitors are around his age, and they seem to understand more than others that the plantation is not just spooky or eerie, it’s a sad place where the unspeakable happened again and again. And if these kids could understand the truth about Hollow Pines, maybe they could help him uncover the dark secrets of his past and help him find a way to finally move on. But Hollow Pines doesn’t like visitors. And with a malevolent spirit lurking in the shadows and painful memories buried deep, and for good reason, the boy wonders if he’ll ever find his way home or be stuck at Hollow Pines forever.
The Personalization of the Museum Visit examines a fundamental shift in institutional behavior in museums located in the United States and the United Kingdom. Contending that art museums have moved toward a new paradigm of public engagement, it posits that modern museum visitors are treated as self-directed "clients", with the agency to make meaning for themselves. The book then considers how this change has come about, examining factors such as the onset of a new museology, an experience economy, and a marketing revolution. Drawing on extensive research undertaken at Britain’s Tate Modern, the book examines a range of issues, including visitor engagement, curatorial practice, and museum management. A visit experience that is customizable to the individual visitor, in which curators and marketers work together with visitor-clients to create an experience of personalized meaning, is, Rodney argues, rising in prevalence in the art museum field, but it is also being stymied by certain structural impediments. This book examines such obstacles, including institutional division of labor, long-standing conceptions, or misconceptions, of the museum’s mission, and the orientation of museums toward a certain conceptual model of their visitors. The Personalization of the Museum Visit is essential reading for scholars and students engaging with issues of visitor engagement, curatorial practice, and museum management. With a particular focus on the role of business interests and public policy, the book should also be of interest to those undertaking research in fields outside of museum and visitor studies.
HARDBACK, gloss finish cover 8.5" x 8.5" (216mm x 216 mm) 96 lined quality white pages Welcome page with space to add your personalized message Left page with Date, Name & Address / Right page for Comments (full page). Suitable for vacation homes, beach house, B&Bs, Airbnbs, guest house, retreat centers, galleries, events & functions
Exhibition environments are enticingly complex spaces: as facilitators of experience; as free-choice learning contexts; as theaters of drama; as encyclopedic warehouses of cultural and natural heritage; as two-, three- and four-dimensional storytellers; as sites for self-actualizing leisure activity. But how much do we really know about the moment-by-moment transactions that comprise the intricate experiences of visitors? To strengthen the disciplinary knowledge base supporting exhibition design, we must understand more about what ‘goes on’ as people engage with the multifaceted communication environments that are contemporary exhibition spaces. The in-depth, visitor-centered research underlying this book offers nuanced understandings of the interface between visitors and exhibition environments. Analysis of visitors’ meaning-making accounts shows that the visitor experience is contingent upon four processes: framing, resonating, channeling, and broadening. These processes are distinct, yet mutually influencing. Together they offer an evidence-based conceptual framework for understanding visitors in exhibition spaces. Museum educators, designers, interpreters, curators, researchers, and evaluators will find this framework of value in both daily practice and future planning. Designing for the Museum Visitor Experience provides museum professionals and academics with a fresh vocabulary for understanding what goes on as visitors wander around exhibitions.
Engaging the Visitor addresses some of the most fundamental issues relating to interpretation, exhibition design and the visitor experience, in a format which is attractive, approachable - and above all actionable. Challenging many preconceptions, this book is firmly rooted in the results of museum-based scientific research. Deep and effective engagement with exhibit content is still the exception in very many museums. When most visitors pass an exhibit with only a glance, it will fail to engage. And until the visitor is engaged no informal learning - or any other satisfying experience - will happen... This book will help you answer such questions as: How often do visitors really engage with the content of the exhibitions in our museum? Why do our visitors engage with some of our exhibits and not others? How can we increase our visitors' engagement through better exhibit design?
